To put it more accurately, in China every brand can be a Dollar Shave Club (DSC). Or a Harry’s or a Warby Parker. In other words, every brand has the opportunity to participate in the market as a pure-play e-commerce brand. Even if the brand is already in the market, it can still behave like a pure play and capture the upside of the e-commerce channel. This opportunity for a brand to seize the special benefits of China e-commerce is especially true for premium and international brands.

We know the DSC story at this point. Upstart American firm finds a channel to disrupt a seemingly closed market. With clever marketing and a dollop of audacity,
Gillette and Schick are knocked back and a new brand is created. In four years, DSC builds to a 5% market share and sells to
Unilever for $1 billion.

Unilever has the family of brands to push through the DSC system and it has the global network to take DSC to new markets. To me, $1 billion looks like a mighty good bargain, particularly when we recall
Procter & Gamble spent $57 billion to purchase Gillette (Admittedly with brands and assets beyond the razors.)

The takeaway here is that your brand can replicate this strategy in China, at least partially. Here are three points to help your brand reach its China potential...

Unharness your e-commerce strategy from your bricks and mortar strategy. E-commerce can go faster, introduce products more easily, and develop a national customer base. Do not force it to keep pace with B&M. Start running.

Turbocharge your social media and digital outreach. Most Chinese consumers evaluate brands in the digital space. The absurdist humor of DSC might not be the best for China, but many other approaches work brilliantly. You need to provide information about your brand beyond product specifications. What about brand heritage and history? Which celebrities use your product? Do you use videos? Do you tell a story?

This trend is more pronounced for the international and the premium brands, because they readily connect with the Internet consumer. About half of China’s population is online, so an e-commerce strategy reaches the more affluent and (literally) switched-on half of the population. No surprise that mass-market products will find 15% of their sales online in China, but premium products will find 30% of their sales to be online.

The question is no longer: How can e-commerce augment your China strategy? Now the question is: How can e-commerce drive your China strategy. As DSC founder Mike Dubin states, “The party is on.”